


Developing Community Engagement

by mechanonymouse



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 03:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17015211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: From community meetings to flooding Romford High Street. Not everything Peter does results in property damage but it's always major property damage when it does.





	Developing Community Engagement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treewishes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treewishes/gifts).



> This is set nebulously either after Hanging Tree and before Lies Sleeping or after Lies Sleeping and status quo has return for Peter. So no spoilers for Lies Sleeping but some spoilers for Hanging Tree.

It started out as something that should have saved Peter time and distracted Tyburn from trying to control how the Folly did things or at least that’s how Peter had sold it to Nightingale. To Tyburn herself, and the Commissioner, the phrases “community engagement” and “preventative policing” were uttered. Tyburn would set up committees, who would canvass the community and arrange forums where the demi-monde could address what they wanted and needed from the Met, and by extension the GLA. Useful work that was better suited to Tyburn’s skill set than Peter or Nightingale’s. So how had it ended with Peter sitting in an empty basement in Romford, smoke seeping in through the small cracks around the single door with a half tiger toddler climbing over him as Tyburn paced the floor very carefully not flooding the basement they were in while she flooded the shop above them, Peter wasn’t sure. He hoped that the crashing, sound of heavy booted feet on the ceiling above them and vaguely familiar, Essex tinged, loud voices he could hear approaching were for them and would arrive before the sloshing water he could hear above. Powerful vestigia fought against each other; vodka and machine oil competing with the smell of new car seats, horses and furniture polish and the sensation acceleration pressing him against the wall as the crowd and the engine roared in his mind and his stomach dropped with the last fall. “Why did you flood my river, Ty?” A female voice asked as the door slammed open to reveal a large white man with a very orange fake tan, athleisure gear that had obviously never seen a gym and finished with an incongruous and well worn pair of paraboots.

No, strike that Peter knew exactly how they had ended up here. 

It all started going wrong at the fourth of Tyburn’s forums. She had insisted from the start that there be a presence from the Folly at each and that she would begrudgingly accept the Starling if his master was unavailable. The first three of the open meetings had been uneventful, Peter presenting the Folly way of doing things, Tyburn evangelising for her way and most of the demi-monde being there to rubber neck the resulting argument or complain about specific petty wrongs either the Rivers or the Folly were committing. 

That changed at the fourth fora, the first half went as the previous had until an older woman with a faintly grubby air about her who your eyes slipped over unless you concentrated on her stood. “What you going to do about the creepy Isaac shit showing up up on my stall?” She asked brandishing a battered leather bound book.

One of Tyburn’s helpers quickly brought the book up the stage where on closer inspection it revealed itself to be a leather journal filled with tiny barely legible scrawl, dirty and heavily annotated photocopies of Newton’s Principia Magica, and painstakingly transcribed pages of the various core magical texts also heavily notated. If there was one thing that Tyburn and Nightingale agreed upon it was that unknown wizards, likely trained by either the original Faceless Man or one of his students, wandering around Greater London was not desirable. 

The timetable for Open Meetings rapidly changed so the next one would be held in Romford - outside the Met’s patch but there is only one Folly and Essex Police are used to joint exercises and shared competencies - and Tyburn’s army of helpers were set to canvassing the local area. Meanwhile Peter found himself taking TfL Rail out to darkest Essex at 7am on Wednesday to catch the market as it opened. 

Rosa’s stall was as easy to overlook as the woman herself. Market officials walked past their eyes sliding from the stall selling nearly expired dry goods to the one selling definitely not fallen off the back of a lorry athleisure wear without touching on Rosa’s eclectic stall. There was jewelry, ranging from tarnished metal pieces with what Peter was fairly certain were real rubies and sapphires to cheap modern costume jewelry that screamed with vestigia, knick knacks of similar variability, military medals and pins scattered amongst cheap china and glass vases and knock off mobile games consoles. On one corner of the stall were a pile of battered books, most bound in plain unadulterated brown leather but some were cardbound with the same illegible scrawl as the first journal on the front cover.

“It comes to me.” Rosa said, shifting on her feet. “To me family. Small stuff from our kind that needs to be not where it was, me dad says. Not a big deal just knick knacks and oddments til you Isaac’s creepy stuff started showing up.” Peter looked at the books. “Not just the books, stuff I wouldn’t have on the stall.” From her rusty transit van she dragged three big cardboard boxes. “This stuff.” She said pushing it at him. “Showed up for the first time here and comes here no matter if I leave it in the lockup.”

Peter opened the first box. His mind wouldn’t put together what exactly he was seeing at the top, showing sections rather than the whole - the furless tail wrapped around tiny legs, a small hand grasping at nothing in through the slightly green fluid. Swallowing he closed the box on it. One for Drs Walid and Vaugan, he thought.

With the boxes and the pile of books that Rosa cheerfully dumped on him there was enough that there was no way that he was getting back to the Folly by public transport so he ended up sitting in a minicab that smelt of ancient cigarette smoke ingrained in the seats and KP Honey Roasted Peanuts. Sagged alarmingly when he filled the boot and back seat with the boxes and whined, emitting furious clouds of black smoke every time the driver tried to accelerate above twenty. Not that London rush hour traffic facilitated speeds faster than a slow dawdle for very long. The only positive was that he could make his way direct to Drs Walid and Vaughan and offload the majority of the boxes contents on them before taking the journals and artifacts back to the Folly for inspection by Nightingale.

The bit Peter wasn’t sure about was how he _and_ Tyburn went from listening to the petty grievances of the demi-monde at the fifth of Tyburn’s Open Meetings rearranged to Romford Town Hall three days later to a boarded up shop and flat above on the High Street with pained sounds emitting. Peter was not liable to bring members of the public in to potentially dangerous situations with him unnecessarily and Tyburn not the type to do her own dirty work unless it was personal and especially not so far from her source. Although he guessed it was personal, unethical medical experiment with magic and science were a hallmark of the first Faceless Man and the second, Chorley, had made himself a threat to Tyburn and more importantly her family.

Still entering the shop with Tyburn felt like a dream, not fully real like something else was in control of him but it didn’t feel like Tyburn. Her power was a familiar fight. This was urgent but gentle, guiding him and making him think it was his own choice. In fact, until things had started exploding around them she had seemed to be walking through fog just as much as he had. He blamed that and that they had quickly located the source of the pained noises to a dying caged young woman, her fur mangy patches and matted against her emancipated form, and a small dirty toddler huddled against her for them ending up in the basement. The same toddler who was now pulling curiously at Peter’s too long hair reminding him no matter how much Beverley liked to hold on to it, it was time to shave it back down. 

Releasing the toddler had set of the first in a series of demon traps that forced them to retreat until they were pinned. The open basement door at their backs and explosions drawing ever closer. The moment they backed through the basement door it swung closed revealing there was no lock mechanism on this side and the hinges were protected with a metal plate. Other than the door and them, the basement was completely empty. No drains in the floor or ventilation grates. Nothing marring the blank concrete walls and not even a collection of broken pallets that seem to appear in every commercial storage space.


End file.
